which essentially means eliminating the entire federal government except the pentagon. all of a sudden the last couple of months hitting this arbitrary political target is vital. what is vital, as i said, is having a deficit strategy that's consistent with sound economic growth and making sure that we strengthen the middle class and that means as a first step to make sure that our deficits, as the economy improves, as we grow, that our deficits are not growing faster than g.d.p. and that we stabilize the debt as a percentage of g.d.p. because if you don't, as the economy improves, higher government borrowing -- we need to adopt that strategy and adopt it now. have it kicked in over a period of time. we just got very good news that the rate of per capita increase in health care costs is actually at the lowest level of 50 years. we need to continue to adopt strategies to keep that -- those costs increase low. as as demographic changes means baby boomers retire and we clearly need to keep working on those issues. but let me just sum up where we are in terms of our deficit